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Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

reuters.com

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Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#591

Post by davedx »

waveBidder wrote: post #439
davedx wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's a model. But don't we think neural networks and human brains are primarily about their connectedness and feedback mechanisms though? (I did AI and Psychology at degree level, I understand there are definitely also big differences too, like hormones and biological neurones being very async)

You could maybe make a case for CNNs, but the fact that they're feed-forward rather than feedback means they're fundamentally representing a different object (CNN is a function, whereas the visual system is a feedback network). Transformers, while not exactly functions, don't have a feedback mechanism similar to e.g. the cortical algorithm or any other neuronal structure I'm aware of. In general, the ML field is less…

Thanks for the considered answer. What is the cortical algorithm? (Yeah, it's been quite a few years since I did any bio psych...)

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#592

Post by dyauspitr »

BobbyJo wrote: post #414
dcchambers wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand it. If AGI is actually reached, capital as we know it basically becomes worthless. The entire structure of the modern economy and the society surrounding it collapses overnight. I also don't think there's any way the governments of the world let real AGI stay in the hands of private industry. If it happens, governments around the world will go to war to gain control of it. SSI would be nationa…

> If AGI is actually reached, capital as we know it basically becomes worthless I see it as capital becoming infinitely more valuable and labor becoming worthless, since capital can be transmuted directly into labor at that point.

Labor will never become worthless until you have physical robots with AGI and the dexterity to do what an average human can.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#593

Post by khafra »

Mistletoe wrote: post #564
reissbaker wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general VC is about investing in a large number of companies that mostly fail, and trying to weight the portfolio to catch the few black swans that generate insane returns. Any individual investment is likely to fail, but you want to have a thesis for 1) why it could theoretically be a black swan, and 2) strong belief in the team to execute. Here's a thesis for both of these for SSI: 1. The black swan: if AGI is a…

How will we know when we have achieved AGI with intelligence greater than human-level?

It will propose a test for general intelligence that actually satisfies most people and doesn't cause further goalpost-shifting.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#595

Post by dyauspitr »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #394
dcchambers wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand it. If AGI is actually reached, capital as we know it basically becomes worthless. The entire structure of the modern economy and the society surrounding it collapses overnight. I also don't think there's any way the governments of the world let real AGI stay in the hands of private industry. If it happens, governments around the world will go to war to gain control of it. SSI would be nationa…

What you're talking about is something in the vein of exponential super intelligence. Realistically what actually ends up happening imo, we get human level AGI and hit a ceiling there. Agents replace large portions of the current service economy greatly increasing automation / efficiency for companies. People continue to live their lives, as the idea of having a human level AGI personal assistant becomes normalized a…

If you can get a truly human level AGI, with enough resources it will get to super intelligence by itself.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#596

Post by khafra »

slashdave wrote: post #577
throwawayk7h wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Ilya is sincere in his belief about safe superintelligence being within reach in a decade or so, and the investors sincerely believe this as well, then the business plan is presumably to deploy the superintelligence in every field imaginable. "SSI" in pharmaceuticals alone would be worth the investment. It could cure every disease humanity has ever known, which should give it at least a $2 trillion valuation. I'm…

> It could cure every disease humanity has ever known No amount of intelligence can do this without the experimental data to back it up.

Hell, if it simply fixed the incentives around science so we stopped getting so many false positives into journals, that would be revolutionary.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#597

Post by airspresso »

nycdatasci wrote: post #552
gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

I think current models have demonstrated an advanced capacity to navigate “language space”. If we assume “software UI space” is a subset of the language space that is used to guide our interactions with software, then it’s fair to assume models will eventually be able to control operating systems and apps as well as the average human. I think the base case on value creation is a function of the productivity gain that…

Agree with your premise, but the value creation math seems off. $0.50/day might become reality for some percentage of US citizens. But not for 3B people around the world.

There's also the issue of who gets the benefit of making people more efficient. A lot of that will be in the area of more efficient work, which means corporations get more work done with the same amount of employees at the same level of salary as before. It's a tough argument to make that you deserve a raise because AI is doing more work for you.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#598

Post by riffraff »

lucubratory wrote: post #491
alexilliamson wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well-defined goal is the big one. We wanted a big bomb. What does AGI do? AGI is up against a philosophical barrier, not a technical one. We'll continue improving AI's ability to automate and assist human decisions, but how does it become something more? Something more "general"?

"General" is every activity a human can do or learn to do. It was coined along with "narrow" to contrast with the then decidedly non-general AI systems. This was generally conceived of as a strict binary - every AI we've made is narrow, whereas humans are general, able to do a wide variety of tasks and do things like transfer learning, and the thinking was that we were missing some grand learning algorithm that would…

> LLMs are obviously more general than any previous AI system, in that they can do math or play chess or write a poem, all using the same system

But they can't, they still fail at arithmetic and still fail at counting syllables.

I think that LLMs are really impressive but they are the perfect example of a narrow intelligence.

I think they don't blur the lines between narrow and general, they just show a different dimension of narrowness.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#599

Post by alsdasH »

gigatexal wrote: post #306

This being ycombinator and as such ostensibly has one or two (if not more) VCs as readers/commentators … can someone please tell me how these companies that are being invested in in the AI space are going to make returns on the money invested? What’s the business plan? (I’m not rich enough to be in these meetings) I just don’t see how the returns will happen. Open source LLMs exist and will get better. Is it just tha…

The VCs probably assume that a pivot to military/surveillance/propaganda applications is possible if/when AGI fails.

Re: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

#600

Post by ithkuil »

furyofantares wrote: post #489
steveBK123 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different than the (lack of) business model of all the voice assistants? How good does it have to be, how many features does it have to have, how accurate does its need to be.. in order for people to pay anything? And how much are people actually willing to spend against the $XX Billion of investment? Again it just seems like "sell to AAPL/GOOG/MSFT and let them figure it out".

> How is this any different than the (lack of) business model of all the voice assistants? Voice assistants do a small subset of the things you can already do easily on your phone. Competing with things you can already do easily on your phone is very hard; touch interfaces are extremely accessible, in many ways more accessible than voice. Current voice assistants only being able to do a small subset of that makes the…

I wonder if we'll end up having intelligent agents interacting with mobile apps / web pages in headless displays because that's easier than exposing an API for every app
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